After the heroes have departed the new Gateway, Strength's Emissary stands on the ramparts, watching over the road approaching the village of Piddling. With the demons destroyed and their blood-mad summoners broken and slaughtered, there was little real threat here, but it meant that he didn't have to watch the fey going about the village and they couldn't see the tear-mussed fur of his face.

"Pacts are bad," Ruben had said even as the landscape was shifting into that of the fey wilds. He'd been right, freedom had been a sweet nectar, but at what cost? Talalok could only echo Ruben's words back at him in reply.

Strength's Emissary glances back over his shoulder to where his Lord is presiding over yet another challenge. To The Death, as they always were, for what little that means here. Strength didn't understand death. None of the fey did.

**As the challenge ended, two members of the Court of Strength entered the village dragging a body between them. It wore soft brown armour that had been ripped to shreds as if by great claws and was covered in blood. Laying it before Strength, they looked up at their lord for approval.

Looking down, Strength’s face passed through several snarled expressions before settling on one of interest. Reaching down he plucked the body up by its neck as if it weighed nothing and brought it up to eye level.

To those around him, it looked like a bizarre mirror. Fey Lord Strength, alive, unharmed, holding in front of him the bloodied corpse of his former human self. With barely a grunt of effort, Strength hurled the body into the ring and uttered a single word**

“Eat”

**The Fey of the Court of Strength responded immediately, weapons, tabards, armour, the illusion of civilisation lost within an instant to be replaced by yellow eyes, thick black hair, bloody teeth and claws as they became the ancient Fey word for Strength: Midari.

Suddenly as if a haze had been lifted from his mind, Talalok remembered. A hundred violent deaths? A thousand? Lord Strength’s sport in the Fey realms, the feline hunted by the wolves to be ripped apart only to come back again and again and again. Sometimes Strength would send just one of the creatures against him and the hunt might last days or weeks and sometimes Talalok would win…until the next one was sent and the next and the next, he couldn’t fight forever. Other times the whim of Strength might be to send a pack. Dozens might join the chase or hundreds and each time he fell he forgot it all…until it all began again.

His mind flicked to the pact he had made a few short hours ago. A chance to be Strength’s emissary in the world. Had there been enough of Bishop left to give him a chance to escape or was this Strength’s final cruelty: a choice to stay, to die over and over again and forget each time or one final hunt, a hunt across a new landscape where death was forever.

He had given up his desire for exploration for now it no longer mattered where he was going to…but what he was running from.**

As the memories return, the feline stands and watches, fixed in place by horror, his desire for escape greater than ever. But then another Desire rises within him, a darker, more bloody desire. Bishop was a hero, more than Talalok could ever have been. He sacrificed himself, body and soul to stop the demons threatening to destroy his world and his friends. He deserves better than this.

He catches himself before his newfound rage takes control, and lowers his staff. Here, within the bounds of the fey, death could not truely enter. But out there. Out there, perhaps he could lure some of these animalistic fey to their true deaths. Perhaps, eventually, he might even lure out Midari himself.

Yes, Bishop deserves better than an echo-life as the face of an old god, the feline thinks as he jumps the low wall and begins to make his way south. He deserves the peace of true death.

An hour or so later, a loud, clear voice can be heard across the coutryside.

"Lord Velnashar! God of Destruction! Watch over me now as I seek to bring destruction and an end to the strongest of Fey! Lend me your blessing that I might find a way of ending even an imortal fey lord, and accept the offerings I give you as I destroy the hounds which chase me! Hail Velnashar!"

**The movement draws the attention of every wolf and they tense but don't move, their eyes instead flicker to their lord who watches the departing feline before turning back to his court. His eyes gleam yellow rather than their previous cold blue as they pass over each of the wolves.

A minute goes by. Then a second. A third and still the pack sits, tense but unwilling to move.

Strength smiles, his canines just slightly too long before barking out a short phrase**

"To the death!"

**Five of the werewolves give chase, following Talalok into the world. Had they been in their more civilised form and had anyone been watching, they might have recognised them as the same five fey who had rebelled against the new Lord of Strength and ransacked the village just two dawns previous before being slain in the tavern. The rest return to their meal, their hunger sated but their lust for blood would have to wait for another day.**